Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, stated that the company will be ready for IPO in 2023, according to Techcrunch.com. Shuttleworth made the announcement in a press briefing before the launch of Ubuntu of 22.04 LTS. This is not the first time that Shuttleworth shared his plans for an IPO. He stated that the creator of Ubuntu is on its patch to become a public company in 2017.
$175 million revenue
Shuttleworth also stated that the company’s revenue last year was $175 million, thus, going public is not about the fundraising. The biggest challenge is that the demand is bigger than the company’s capacity because there isn’t enough talent for the company to hire. Mark Shuttleworth, Founder and CEO of Canonical said,
Mark Shuttleworth, Founder and CEO of Canonical
« We are on track to float the business. And now I’m pretty confident that we will do that in 2023. And so we’re taking active steps at the board level and in our finance operation, various other parts of the business, to be prepared for that. We’re now effectively on a very clear program to a flotation of the business next year.
My biggest concern as we move through all of that, as we grow both the number of colleagues and shift to being a public company with that sort of accountability, is to find the balance between preserving what I think people really love about Ubuntu and Canonical and also continuing to step up to the responsibilities that I think we now have in the global tech market. We’re very committed to the idea that as we grow, we’re not going to do that in a way which is shallow or causes problems for us further down the line, we are quite conservative in how we grow. »
